


Faker

by DeadSatelliteTheTombGirl



Category: The Ascendance Trilogy - Jennifer A. Nielsen
Genre: F/M, The Ascendance Trilogy modern AU, its also probably full of spelling and grammar mistakes, sorry - Freeform, this probably isnt as well written as i want it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25699336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadSatelliteTheTombGirl/pseuds/DeadSatelliteTheTombGirl
Summary: (This is a modern AU of the first 3 Ascendance Trilogy (by Jennifer Nielsen) books, featuring corporations doing bad things, and me being as faithful as possible to the original books while changing things that annoy me!!!!)Jaron's life seems to never go right. He never thought he'd end up having to impersonate himself, the theoretically dead heir to a multi-million dollar company, but here he is, and he needs this to go right, or he may end up actually dead, along with some other teenagers.
Relationships: Amarinda of Bultain/Tobias, Jaron Artolius Eckbert III/Imogen
Comments: 9
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

Recovery is a long, hard road. Recovery hurts. Recovery might beat getting my leg broken by my best friend for most painful thing I’ve ever been through. Just kidding, that never held the title for most painful thing I’ve ever been through, except possibly while it was happening, because that was a pretty traumatizing day. Probably the most painful thing I’ve ever had to go through was when the man who murdered my family told me they were dead, and I had to pretend that, A., I had never met them before, and B., I didn’t care that they were dead.  
So maybe recovery is lower on the list of super painful things I’ve been through than most would think healthy, but that’s ok. I have a new family now to help me through my recovery. I’ve got Immie, with her new haircut and her soft smile and her finally freedom. I’ve got Tobias with his sketchbooks and his textbooks and his big wireframe glasses. I’ve got Rinda, with her designer suits and her regal countenance and that face she makes when Tobias calls her Amy. I’ve got Roden, with his harsh laugh and his strong jaw and his anger when something happens to the people he loves. I’ve got Harlowe, with his scruffy beard and his bratty granddaughter and the way he calls me son even though my dad died two years ago. I’ve got Mott, with his terrifying glare, and his muscles, and that dumb band he hangs out with.  
Maybe my family isn’t traditional, and maybe more than one of them has tried to kill me before, but we’re ok now, cause I can’t blame them (also they don’t want to kill me anymore, and they were generally under extreme duress when their attempts were made on my life).  
The first time someone ever tried to kill me, I was 10, and I deserved it. That time it wasn’t a family member though, that time it was a gang leader who wanted money. He wanted a couple million dollars, so he hijacked a taxi that I was supposed to be in. But I wasn’t in that taxi. I wasn’t in a taxi at all. I was in a church, under a pew, hiding from the people who were supposed to be getting me into that taxi, which was supposed to be taking me to a plane, which was supposed to be taking me to the UK, because my family was sick of dealing with me, the walking PR nightmare.  
I was a brat, who spoke my mind, and exposed scandals, and lost investors, and sure my dad loved me, but he loved his company more. So the gang leader didn’t kill me, but he was paid a handsome sum to say that he had, and I ended up with a different name, and a lady who ran a foster home was also paid a significant amount of money to say that I was her foster kid. My dad showed up to her house one day and tried to explain to me (a ten year old who didn’t understand why I was being abandoned by the people who said that they loved me) that mom and my brother didn’t know that I was alive, and it was so much better for the company and all the people who worked there that I wasn’t ruining their lives anymore. Even though I was ten, I understood what, “For the common good,” meant, and was resigned to it, like a sucker.  
I did not live out my days as a nobody though, don’t worry. Turbeldy, the lady dad was paying to say I was her foster son, didn’t feed me as much as she could have, so I stole when I got too hungry. I got into fights when the other kids got too mean. I got into trouble and I didn’t let anyone break my spirit because I knew who I was, even if no one else did.  
The next couple of times that people tried to kill me, it was because I stole from them, and I’m sure that they thought they were justified. They weren’t of course, I was a starving kid. I think if anyone’s entitled to stealing food it’s a starving kid, or a somebody who has dependent mouths to feed. I was a starving kid trying to feed some other starving kids at Turbeldy’s. I swear I’m not trying to throw Turbeldy under the bus or anything, but like there’s a reason that she got arrested, and it wasn’t the weed she was growing in that window box. She probably tried to kill me too, but she never fed any of us kids, so she didn’t have a vessel to get enough poison into me to kill me, and if she killed me some other way she’d probably get reported. So, maybe I am trying to throw Turbeldy under the bus, sue me.  
After four years of living at Turbeldy’s, “building character” through starvation, thievery, and trying to keep the other kids alive, Conner showed up and bought me off her. Wild right. Some kind of 2012 fanfic crap.  
I honestly couldn’t believe it when I got back from school and heard, “This man’s name is Bevin, Bevin Conner, and he’s taking you with him, he bought you.”  
“Bond, James Bond,” I’d said, in my shock, and Turbeldy had hit me in the side of the head with a magazine.  
“That would be ‘Conner, Bevin Conner’,” Conner had said, as though he wasn’t one third of the most bizarre situation to occur in my life since my father had abandoned me and paid a gang leader to say that he'd killed me.  
So I ran. I turned around, shoved the front door of Turbeldy’s ridiculous apartment open, and sprinted for the stairs. And I was met, at the door to the stairwell, by Mott. At the time, I wasn’t aware he was Mott, he was just giant and scary, and he punched me in the face when I tried to shove past him and get to the stairs. I immediately passed out, and regained consciousness in the back of an incredibly expensive looking car.  
When my senses returned to me, it was abundantly obvious to me that something was very much up. There were three other kids trapped with me in the back of this car. They had all had the same general characteristics to me, but we didn’t really look alike. Like we looked like we’d all been arrested because of the same minimal description in a newspaper, having been based on the shock-addled memory of a teenager who was high at the time they described the criminal, because random and over-vigilant citizens had found it their civic duty to call the police tip line every time they saw a vaguely underfed looking boy with brown hair and muddy greenish eyes. Also, I had been handcuffed to the armrest on the door, and no one else had.  
“Hi friends,” I said, “any idea what on earth is going on right now?”  
“We’re not your friends,” said Roden, who at the time I didn’t know was Roden.  
“Well, I might be,” said Latimer, who at the time I didn’t know was Latimer, “he might be nice. He’s probably nicer than you at least.”  
“You’re tied up, and we're not,” said Tobias, who at the time I didn’t know was Tobias, “and it’s because Conner said that you made trouble when he was picking you up.”  
“Right,” I said, “Conner, Bevin Conner. Is it cool with everyone here that I hate that dude?”  
“It’s not really cool with me,” said Tobias, “I think that anything’s going to be better than where I was.”  
“I’m going to doubt that, where I was was bad,” said Latimer.  
“It was implied that where I was, was also bad,” said Tobias.  
“I cannot believe this,” I said, and I meant to say it just to myself, but nothing was going right for me that day.  
“What, do you have a problem?” said Roden, with a threatening heir to him that suggested to me that, though I did have a problem with everything occurring at the time, it was in my best interest not to admit to it.  
Latimer and Tobias were still fighting about which of their origins were worse, and I was beginning to feel very bad for Latimer, and very sick of Tobias. I was also motion sick, which is always a plus when you're tied up in a very expensive car with a bunch of people that you don’t know and are beginning to hate.  
“Yeah actually, I do have a problem,” I said, even though I was fully aware that it was probably going to get me decked, “I have a problem with all of you people making my headache worse, and no one explaining to me what’s going on.”  
My head did hurt. I could feel dried blood on my chin and under my nose, which I supposed was from being hit in the face by a fist that was honestly much more bricklike than organic. I was also hungry, which had a tendency to make my headaches worse, but I was always hungry, so that wasn’t worth complaining about.  
Roden was really looking like he was about to punch me from the other side of the car, but then we came to an abrupt stop, and the driver, who I didn’t recognize, but apparently the other three did, turned around and said something unintelligible.  
It sounded sort of like, “We’re at the place where we stop for the night,” but I knew that couldn’t have been it, because we were in the absolute middle of nowhere, and a guy like Conner didn’t look like a camper. But, apparently, that was what he’d said, because the car didn’t keep going that night, and we were hauled out of it and onto the hard-packed earth. Or, at least, I was, because I was still tethered to the car, and couldn't stand up that way.  
And that was when Conner made it clear that he was absolutely insane, and that he and his plan were truly gone, and also cared nothing for legality.  
So basically, his plan was for all of us to impersonate me (Because he didn’t know that I was me he just kind of thought I was some kid he’d bought. He also thought that my name was Sage, because that was what my dad told Turbeldy to tell everyone, and I eventually stopped trying to tell people what my name really was.) and then whoever did the best me impression would be presented to the board of my dad's company (He’d told me that my parents and brother were dead with absolutely no feeling in his voice, like his friendship with my dad didn’t even matter, that once I found out that he was the one who’d killed them, it was the only thing that made sense.) and then that one would be his puppet, or just make him the owner of the company. Basically his plan was to make counterfeit mes, and then pretend that the best one was the real me, and then try to sell this not-me-me to the board of people who had known me from the time I was born to the time I was “murdered”.  
And then, to prove to us that he was completely serious (and also that he was the absolutely craziest person we were ever to meet) he shot Latimer dead and threw him in a nearby river. Seriously. I know this is already insane, but it gets way worse.  
So then, in the morning, he bundled his remaining three counterfeits into that really expensive car. He didn’t think I needed to be tied up anymore, having (wrongly) assumed that after literally committing murder the night before, he’d scared me into submission. We were in the car for six and a half hours, and then arrived at his country manor house.  
We were then dragged into the house, and despite the fact that this house had eighteen bedrooms, we were all shoved into the same one. None of us had any belongings except for the clothes we were wearing, and whatever happened to be in our backpacks. I had some school books, a sweatshirt, and a rock dad had given me just in case I ever needed to prove who I was to the board for any reason. The rock was gold, at least that was what dad said, but I knew full well that it was fool’s gold and completely worthless. But he’d told me that it was gold, so I almost believed that he’d given me something of more than zero worth.  
We were there for three days before I saw Imogen. I was struck with the fact that she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. And then I was told that she was mute, and really wasn’t sure why it mattered. I was informed by one of the staff that Imogen was Conner’s adopted daughter, but only because he’s been dating her mom when she died, and she reminded him of her mom, so he adopted her, and then when she stopped talking and the psychiatrist said it was because of her grief, he quit paying her any attention. Imogen hung out around the others and I while we were getting our me training, never interacting with us at all, just always there.  
The me training was going fine for a while, and then it stopped being fine because Conner decided that I wasn’t being obedient enough to him, and then he made a bad decision, causing me to make a series of bad decisions. Long story short I ended up passed out in the basement with a pretty big cut on my back because Mott tried to kill me by accident. (That’s one of the other times that one of my family members tried to kill me.) And then Imogen came down to see me, and I, half delirious with still being mostly passed out, told her to go away.  
“I’m not leaving you alone here until I have to,” she’d whispered, and then I’d flipped out a little bit, because I was told that she didn’t talk.  
“You talk?” I said, way too loud.  
“Hush,” She said, “yes, I think that’s pretty obvious at this point.”  
“I don’t know, I might have been delirious,” I said, and Imogen had scowled at me.  
“Well, if you're done being an idiot, I brought you something to eat,” she said.  
“I’m never done being an idiot.”  
“Don’t make me leave.”  
“Glad to know I’m driving you insane, Immie.”  
She scowled at me again, but in a way that told me she wanted to humor my ridiculousness for a few more minutes. She pulled a crescent roll out of her jacket pocket and slipped it into my hand. I scarfed it, and then immediately passed out again, and when I woke up she was gone.  
Over the next few days, I got dragged out of the basement, it was discovered that the cut on my back was infected, I spent a lot of time being only about 12% conscious, and was locked in the room that the other boys and I were sharing. And then I gained complete consciousness, and pretended that I didn’t, and learned a lot of things about my roommates.  
Tobias was planning to be the one who got chosen as Conner’s me, and then he was going to kill Conner and hide his body or something. It wasn’t completely clear what on earth his plan was, but it was clear that Conner wouldn’t be happy about it. And Roden just really wanted to be Conner’s me, with no ulterior motive whatsoever.  
Then we can skip a few days in which nothing at all happened, and then Tobias tried to kill me in the middle of the night, the night before we met Rinda, but it was fine because he didn’t succeed and he was really scared at the time. I was also really scared at the time, but at least I didn’t try to kill someone.  
And then the next afternoon we met Rinda, because her dad knew Conner, and she had a tentative friendship with Immie. And Tobias fell head over heels in love. We kept our heads down just in case, because she’d been engaged to my brother before he died, and she was still a member of the family, even though my brother was gone.  
To fast forward another few months, Mott figured out who I actually was, Conner hurt me some more, Tobias and Roden were idiots, Roden almost got chosen, and then I got chosen. I got chosen by the man who killed my family to play myself in his demented play with the world as a stage. So I cried in a gas station bathroom for twenty minutes when we were on our way to the city where I’d grown up, the city where Conner planned to dupe the world, with me as his accomplice. What he didn’t seem to understand was that I still didn’t care what he did, because I knew that I had the upper hand.  
Nineteen hours after my panic attack in that gas station bathroom, I was back in the apartments that I owned but hadn’t seen since I was ten, and the family that I was born into wasn’t there. The family I had loved and longed to go back to for so long was dead, and even though I could put their murderer behind bars, I could never have them back. And even if I could have them back, everything would be different, because I’d become a very different person over the course of the last four years.  
So I was crying again, this time in the bedroom that I’d shared with my brother, which now only had one bed in it, because as far as my brother had known, I was never coming back. I cried, by myself, while my new family (at that time consisting only of Immie, Tobias, and Mott, because Roden had expressed a great desire to kill me and run away into the night somewhere near the beginning of the aforementioned nineteen hours) was sitting in the living room, watching (for unknown reasons) The Lego Movie.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> book 2!

Let's fast forward another two months, because all I did was get used to having people in my life who loved me, eating three times a day, living in my own home again, and being a multi-millionaire. Imogen moved into my apartment because I had a lot of extra bedrooms, Conner got arrested, and she was somehow an emancipated minor. I was also an emancipated minor, but that’s not super important. So Immie and I lived in our giant apartment, and we did our best to be less traumatized than we were. We smiled a lot, and lied to each other about the way we felt, and then we cried in our rooms at night and didn’t open our hearts.   
The next interesting thing that happened was during a press conference I was supposed to be attending (because Carthya was my company, not dad’s company anymore). It didn’t much matter to me that I was supposed to be attending this press conference, I was outside, in the little round garden with the tiny fountain. I was sitting on the lip of the fountain, staring up into the night.  
The interesting thing that happened was Roden showed up again, from seemingly nowhere. He appeared from the mist, and ambushed me.  
“Hello imposter,” he said, with a garotte wire around my neck.   
I thanked heaven that the board had hired me a stylist for this stupid press conference, and that the stylist had put me in a turtleneck under this beige blazer.  
“Gghk,” I said, because I couldn’t breathe, there was a garotte wire around my neck.  
“If I don’t get to be Jaron, then no one gets to be Jaron, ok? You’re going to die here, and no one will hear you scream,” Roden hissed into my ear.  
“Gghkkk,” I said.  
Roden laughed and shook me. I elbowed him in the stomach. Apparently he hadn’t been expecting that, because he spluttered and fell backwards into the water.   
“Thank heaven,” I choked.   
Roden cursed at me, and pulled a knife out of his sleeve. Then I cursed.   
“Hey, can you not?” I said, but it came out as more of a croak.   
“Never, and if I can’t kill you, I can hurt the people you love until you beg me to kill you,” said Ronan, “And if I can’t do it, the Pirates can.”  
The Pirates were the gang whose leader had tried to kill me when I was ten. Of course Roden had joined a gang. That gang. My life, or so I (incorrectly) thought in that split second, could not get any worse.   
“Woah, calm down,” I said.  
Roden kicked me in the stomach. I stumbled forward and hit the ground. Roden picked me up by my jacked lapels. Something possessed him not to kill me then and there, but to throw me in the fountain.   
“You’re an idiot, Roden,” I said, “you should have killed me already.”  
He roared senselessly, and lunged for me, so I put my foot up and it caught him in the stomach. He roared even louder.   
“Whoops,” I said, and dragged myself out of the fountain.  
“You’ll pay for this,” said Roden, and then he disappeared from whence he came.   
I shook myself off, and sat back down on the side of the fountain. I lay my head in my hands, and took a deep breath. More attempted murder, just the thing to make my day even better.   
“Jaron,” said Imogen, who was appearing from a door in the side of the courtyard.  
She was smiling, but her smile was gone once she saw me. I looked terrible, I could tell by the way I felt. My arm hurt, and I realized that it was bleeding. Roden must have gotten me with his knife.  
I made a split second decision, which I am now aware was very bad and unhealthy, but It was something that I did, and I’m not proud of it.  
“You know Imogen, I’ve been thinking, and maybe you should move out. We just don’t work together well, and we should be able to move on with our lives. I’ll help you find another place to live, but I just feel like I should be living on my own for a while. There’s no reason for us to stay together anymore,” I said, and I felt like a wet rat, which I suppose I was.  
Roden couldn’t hurt the people I loved if there was no one in my life who I loved. I was an idiot two years ago.  
“Oh, ok, well thank you for telling me how you feel,” Immie said.  
I didn’t say anything.   
“They need you in there, gosh you look awful,” said Immie.   
I still didn’t say anything. I felt terrible, suddenly pushing Immie away, but that was all I felt I could do to keep her safe. I felt powerless and scared, and I wanted to protect the people I loved. My therapist is now helping me work through my sense of stubborn self-sufficiency, but back then I refused to see a therapist because of my trust issues.   
I didn’t look at her as I stood up and began limping towards the doors that led back into the building. I wanted to throw up.   
“You're bleeding,” said Immie to my back.  
I looked down at my arm.  
“Oh yeah, I am,” I said, but I didn’t stop walking.   
When I got back to my apartment Imogen and her stuff were already gone. So I did what I’d already been doing every night for months, I cried for an hour, and then I made myself a nearly inedible dinner and ate it while watching but not really watching whatever happened to be on the TV.   
That was the last night I would spend in my home for a while, because the board was sending me back to Conner’s country manor (now my country manor) to keep me safe. Mott and Tobias showed up at my apartment at 7 A.M., because they both had normal sleep schedules. I was still sleeping, because I valued my rest, so Tobias rolled me off the couch, where I had fallen asleep the night before and made me pack up some stuff. I still owned basically nothing, but I shoved my few belongings into a backpack, wrapped myself in a blanket, and fell asleep in the car on the way to Conner’s house that was now my house.   
Tobias was disappointed in me for falling asleep, because he’s always disappointed in me for something. I woke up at 1 P.M. and Tobias was shooting me with a withering stare. I got deja vu, and then I realized that the last time I’d been in a car on the way to Conner’s country house, Tobias had been glaring at me murderously.   
“Listen,” I said, and I was about to say more but didn’t get to because Tobias interrupted me.   
“No Jaron, I’m not listening to you. Did you kick Imogen out? Gosh, what is your problem? Do you know how many times she’s saved your life? Lots Jaron, lots. You’re so heartless,” he said.  
He sounded like Napoleon Dynamite. It was all I could do not to laugh.   
“Can I explain please,” I said, even though I knew he was right.  
“Sure Jaron, go ahead, it’s not going to help.”  
“Roden said that he was going to hurt the people I loved, he hates me, Tobias. I mean, I can’t blame him. I’d probably hate me too. Anyway, how can he hurt the people I love if I don’t have any?” I said.  
“That’s stupid,” said Tobias, “Jaron you’re an idiot. So why haven’t you kicked anyone else out of your life?”  
“I haven’t had time,” I said, “and now you know, so kicking you out of my life won’t make you hate me.”  
“You’re such an idiot.”  
“Yeah, I know, but I’m going to fix it.”  
“And how do you plan on doing that?”  
“Once we get to Conner’s, you’re going to pretend to be me, and I’m going to escape and find Roden.”  
“You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re such an idiot. I’m not going to help you.”  
“Please Tobias, for Imogen.”  
“I hate you.”  
“I know you do. So it’s settled?”  
Tobias shook his head at me.  
“I have a bad feeling about this.”  
“We’re not in Star Wars, it’s going to be fine.”  
Tobias shook his head at me again, and shoved his earbuds (this was pre-AirPods) in his ears.   
When we got to Conner’s, I sent Mott back to the city for something, because I knew that he wouldn’t be down for my plan, Tobias locked himself in my room to pretend to be me, and I slipped out a window. I knew that when Mott came back from the city he would know that Tobias wasn’t me, and he would be livid. I got as far as I could in the shortest time possible, which involved stealing a bike, buying myself a phone in a convenience store, and taking three different Ubers.   
And then I ended up in the dark in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of the city I had left only that morning, and I could hear screaming. I made sure that it wasn’t me screaming for no reason, and then I went to figure out what the heck was going on. Usually, screaming in the woods on the outskirts of the city meant kids having a party. Kids having a party, however, didn’t usually involve dead bodies, and as I advanced towards the source of the screaming, I came upon three. And then I found the source of the screaming, which was a little girl, sitting next to the body of a dead woman.  
“Hey, it’s ok now, nobody’s going to hurt you,” I said, “what happened here?”  
“Pirates,” said the girl, and I knew what that meant.   
“Where can I take you that you’ll be safe?” I said.   
“My grandpa,” said the girl, pointing in the general direction of a suburbian road about a mile through the woods.  
“Well then, that’s where we’ll go,” I said, helping her up.   
“They’ll find us,” she said.  
“And I’ll keep you safe,” I said, and I wasn’t completely sure what possessed me to do so.  
I didn’t have time to take this random kid to her grandpa, I had to get into the city, find Roden, make him stop trying to kill me and my loved ones, and get out. But the kid needed help. I’d been a kid who needed help once, and no one had helped me, which was how I’d ended up in this whole mess in the first place.   
That was when the motorcycle headlights lit up the forest around us. I grabbed the kid’s hand and ran in the direction of the road. I glanced behind me as I ran, and caught a glimpse of the men on the motorcycles. They were all wearing jackets that said PIRATES on them in big red letters. I was sick of this gang ruining my life. One of the Pirates took a potshot at me while we ran, but luckily it only grazed my side, proving to be painful, but not detrimental to my health.   
I don’t know how we did it, but the kid and I managed to lose the six motorcycles in the woods somewhere before we got to the road. The streetlights of a little clustered community called Harlowe beckoned.  
“Where do I go from here?” I asked the girl.  
She pointed towards Harlowe, and I could not believe my luck.  
“My grandpa built that, he lives right there,” she said.  
So I found myself in a living room with a grateful and grandfatherly man who, at the time, I didn’t know was Harlowe. I mean, I knew that his name was Harlowe, but I didn’t know him yet. He’d already thanked me a thousand times, fed me dinner, offered me a cash reward, and bandaged up the bulletwound in my side. Apparently he was a licensed doctor, as well as owning a real estate development company. I was 83% sure that my company was connected to his company somehow, but I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t blow my cover. I was back to being Sage, the incorrigible orphan who had run away from every good thing in his life. Of course, none of that was very good cover, because it was all true except that my name isn’t Sage.   
“Thank you so much for saving my granddaughter,” said Harlowe for what felt like the millionth time, “can I convince you to stay? I lost my youngest son about ten years ago, and he would be your age now.”  
“I’m sorry for your loss, but I can’t stay anywhere for too long,” I said, rather dramatically.  
Harlowe continued trying to convince me for another two hours, I went to bed, and then I left the next morning. Harlowe protested, and begged me to stay, but I told him I couldn’t, even though I longed to not have to run anymore. I had a gang to find and pretend to join, but I didn’t tell him that.   
It didn’t take as long as I was expecting it to. It only took two hours of walking down the road for me to find the same guys who had killed the people in the woods the night before. They kidnapped me, and then I said I wanted to join their gang, and they didn’t believe me, and then they did because I made a terrible decision that I apologized for later. So they took me to Pirate headquarters for some reason.   
The headquarters was a run down three story apartment building the Pirates had bought off its owner who was sick of having them in her building. The building was a mess, and I couldn’t believe that every single person in it hadn’t been arrested already.   
The first thing I did upon arrival was meet a kid named Fink and we immediately got locked in a basement for no reason at all. Fink was an idiot, but I suppose I was also an idiot, so we were about even. We were locked in the basement for “security purposes” but I think the Pirates just decided that they didn’t like me as a whole the moment I arrived and did their best to ruin my life.   
Then Immie (under cover) showed up and let us out of the basement. Then there were two days in which nothing important happened because Roden wasn’t there and Immie was (understandably) not talking to me. And then Immie started talking to me again. Of course, it was the middle of the night, and we were both somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.   
“What are you doing here,” I demanded as she dabbed a wet paper towel on the burn on my arm (long story).  
“Rinda and I guessed that you’d come here and fix everything yourself, like an idiot,” said Imogen.  
Of course they did. Of course Immie saw through me. Of course Rinda, self-professed big sister of me, knew what I was trying to do.   
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said.  
“I wanted to make sure you didn’t get killed.”  
“You’re supposed to hate me, why don’t you want me to die?”  
“I can’t just stop loving someone I love Jar-” I shot her a glance, “Sage. You hurt me, but that doesn’t mean I want you dead.”  
My heart hurt. I had hurt her. I’d known I would, but hearing her say it made me ache inside. I shouldn’t have done what I did, and I hated myself for it, but that meant nothing. I needed to apologize.  
“Listen, Immie, about what I said, it was the wrong thing to say, I should have just told you the truth, I’m so sorry,” I said.   
“I forgive you, but what you did isn’t ok.”  
“I know it’s not, and I know I shouldn’t have done it, I should have trusted you.”  
Imogen pressed the wet paper towel down harder on my arm and I hissed.   
“You need to go back to your room before someone catches you,” said Imogen after a moment of silence.  
The next three days were normal, and by normal I mean interminable waiting for Roden to come back from wherever it was he’d gone to. Then Immie and I had a fight about what was and wasn’t a good idea for me to do, and I convinced her to get out of there before Roden came back and killed her or something. Fink went with her because he was way too young for this. And then Gregor, the traitorous board member who I’d always hated and was still part of my staff only because I kept forgetting to fire him, dragged Immie back, to use her against me. And then he told Devlin, the gang leader, who I was. Who I really was.   
“You’re an idiot, I hate you, I should have fired you when I had the chance,” I yelled, the second after Gregor said my real name in relation to me.  
“And you’re a child, a fool, you should have been dead four years ago, and you shouldn’t be in control of your father’s company,” yelled Gregor.  
“No one says ‘fool’ anymore, Gregor,” I yelled.   
“Shut up,” yelled Gregor, “You’re a child.”  
“Wait,” yelled Devlin, “you shouldn’t be here. You’re a spoiled little rich kid.” He didn’t know how wrong he was, “Guys, we have some rats to kill! Take them to the basement!”  
“I’m sorry, some? Take them to the basement?” Said Gregor.  
“You’re done being useful to me,” said Devlin.   
“Wait,” I yelled (I was yelling a lot, but I’d recently been betrayed by someone who I, admittedly, didn’t trust already), “You can throw him in the basement, but I’m going to challenge your right as leader of the Pirates.”  
Devlin started laughing at me.  
“You have to let me fight you, it’s the rules,” I said, knowing full well that I was pulling this from nothing, and also knowing that even if there were rules, Devlin wouldn't have ever read them.   
“Alright then, your funeral,” he said.   
“Jaron, no,” Immie screamed, because she knew that this was a good way for me to get myself killed, as she was being dragged from the room.  
Then I almost killed Devlin with a pocket knife, but I didn’t, because I knew that the only way that Immie was getting out alive was if I used his life as a bargaining chip. Devlin agreed that, in exchange for his life, Immie would be let go.   
Oh, then there was a huge misunderstanding, which almost got me killed yet again, but, you know, it didn’t, because Roden showed up. And then he was mad, because someone had told him that he could kill me, and that would be an awful hard thing for him to do if I was already dead when he came back from wherever it is that he was. At that point I didn’t care, any port in a storm. Then he shot Devlin, successfully becoming the most powerful person in the room, and the Pirates’s new leader.   
Then he locked me in the basement and broke my leg, no joke. I mentioned that in the beginning, but with zero context, so now there’s the context. He told me he was going to kill me at some point right after he broke my leg, but I was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, and at that point I didn’t care, because I was convinced that I was going to die from pain any second. And then I passed out, and I thought I was dead until I was rudely awakened by Gregor poking my broken leg with his foot.   
“I hate you,” I hissed groggily.   
“Well good for you, because we hate you too,” said Gregor.   
Suddenly I made a strangled noise. I thought I was going to pass out again, but I didn’t, I just threw up. I cannot begin to express how much pain I was in.  
“Well I have a plan to get us out of here,” I said, even though at the time that I said it, it was technically a lie.  
“I don’t trust you,” said Gregor.  
“Well that’s ok, I don’t need you,” I said, and that was also a lie.   
“I think you do, actually, considering that you can’t walk,” said Gregor.  
“You’re fired,” I said, trying to sit up, “Erick, I’m instating you as my new right hand man, I need you to break that table.”  
Erick’s the Pirate who kidnapped me way back right after I left Harlowe’s house. He did not look happy as I pointed at the rickety wooden table in the corner, but he stepped on it anyway, breaking it into four legs and a million splinters. I reached for one of the legs, and I guess Erick figured out what I was doing, because he kicked it across the floor at me.  
“Thanks,” I said, “Gregor, give me your shirt.”  
Gregor was affronted, but he unbuttoned his expensive business-y shirt and handed it to me. I relished his wincing as I ripped it up so that I could tie the table leg to my broken leg as a kind of splint. Then I used the wall to drag me to my feet. I didn’t like it, but I liked being dead a lot less.  
“What, exactly, would this plan of yours be?” said Erick.  
“I’m going to climb the building and stop Roden,” I said.  
“This is why I said he shouldn’t be in charge of a multi-million dollar company,” said Gregor, exasperatedly throwing his hands in the air, which was exasperating to me.   
“I’m beginning to see your point, man,” said Erick.   
“I’m saving your lives, can you at least wait until I’m out the window before complaining about me?” I said.  
“Sorry, the window?” said Erick.   
I pointed to the reinforced ground-level window.   
“Easy-peasy,” I said.  
“What are you, five?” Said Erick.  
I winked, and began half-dragging myself to the window, or at least the space under it, considering it was above my head on the wall. It wasn’t unusually high, I’m just short.   
“Give me a boost,” I said.   
“I’m not helping you kill yourself,” said Erick.   
“Then you’re helping yourself kill yourself,” I said.  
Erick rolled his eyes.  
“You know I’m right,” I said.  
“You are never right,” said Gregor.   
“Shut up, you don’t know me,” I said.  
“I’ve known you since you were born,” said Gregor.  
“But you don’t actually know me,” I said, “I have layers.”  
“Do you think that you’re Shrek?” Said Erick.  
“Does it matter? We’re wasting time. If any of us want to survive I need to be gone,” I said.   
Gregor boosted me up so that I could break the window and get out of it, while Erick berated him quietly so as not to arouse a guard. I’m going to gloss over most of the climbing part, because it hurt a lot, and honestly I don’t remember most of it. My therapist says I blocked it out. All you really need to know about the climbing part is that I successfully made my way to the building’s roof, where Roden was hanging out.   
Then, I made the same bluff with him as I’d made with Devlin, and thank goodness for me Roden was not aware of the absence of rules of any kind within the Pirates. So we fought, and apparently I blocked a lot of that out too, because all I remember doing was trying not to pass out, trying not to die, and telling Roden that I missed my friend (meaning him). Somehow, me being emotional from pain and begging him to be my friend again won him over, and he let me win the strange fight we were having. Then he called 911, and we made up a story to explain everything that left both of us on the side of the law.   
I passed out with the wail of a siren in my ears, and I woke up again in the hospital, in less pain than I’d been in in recent memory. Rinda and Tobias were standing next to my hospital bed, looking disapproving.   
“You’re an idiot Jaron,” said Rinda.  
“I know, but you love me,” I said.   
“Imogen is so mad at you that she’s staying at Conner’s estate until she feels she can look at you without murdering you,” said Tobias.   
I groaned.   
“You’re an idiot Jaron,” Rinda said again.  
“Yeah, I got that, thanks,” I said.   
“You have a displaced fracture in your tibia,” said Tobias.  
“Tobias slow down,” I said, “I’m an idiot, remember?”  
“Your leg’s really messed up, what did Roden do to you?” said Tobias.  
“Roden didn’t do anything,” I said, because we’d agreed that we wouldn’t tell anyone.  
“He told us himself,” said Rinda, “he just made us swear not to tell anyone else, it's fine.”  
“Can we go back to my question?” said Tobias.  
“Am I allowed to say no?” I asked.   
“No,” said Rinda.  
I rolled my eyes.  
“Additude,” said Rinda.  
“You sound like Darius,” I said.  
Rinda shook her head at me.   
“Is Darius your brother?” said Tobias.  
Rinda nodded emphatically.  
“Let’s move on,” she said.  
“Can I go back to sleep?” I said.  
The next time I woke up, I was being informed that I needed surgery and that they were going to be putting me out. I didn’t know who ‘they’ were, but I was willing to not be awake anymore. The next two months were a blur of me attempting to not be in pain anymore, people telling me to sit down, Rinda and Tobias yelling at me, Roden apologizing to me, and Immie talking to me on the phone. She was apparently much less angry than she had been, and she wanted to talk to me, she just didn’t want to see me in person or come back from Conner’s estate ever again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> book 3!

And then she got kidnapped by some rival companies. No kidding. I really wish I could say that I made that up. If half of the times Immie and I have been kidnapped didn’t really happen, I think we’d be much less wounded people, and so many people wouldn’t be in jail.  
Anyway yeah, she got kidnapped. The companies working in tandem were Avenia, Gelyn, and Mendenwal. They’re rivals to dad’s (my) company Carthya, selling a lot of the same stuff, targeted towards the same demographics.  
Immie was kidnapped to lure Mott to come save her, because Mott loves her like a daughter. No ransom, no nothing, she was just bait. I couldn’t deal with that, because Immie’s a person, not just bait. So I decided that I was going to save her by myself. I only told Roden and Tobias, and I made them swear not to tell anyone until I was gone. Tobias said no, and I pleaded with him until his no became a grudging I don’t like this. Roden told him that he didn’t have to like it, and I slipped out a window.  
It was dark by the time I figured out where they were holding Immie. It was some skyscraper owned by Avenia, I knew that, the only problem was that it was a skyscraper. There were lots of floors, and I didn’t have all the time in the world to look through every room on every floor. I also had to sneak around, because I’m a somewhat recognizable figure, and if anyone involved with the kidnapping happened to see me I was dead meat.  
“Immie,” I hissed into the darkness in the boardroom where I’d figured out she was.  
“Jaron?” She said.  
I turned on the lights.  
“Yep,” I said.  
The look on Immie’s face wasn’t what I was expecting it would be. I was thinking maybe gratitude, that would have made the most sense. The glare that met me though was entirely devoid of thankfulness.  
“Jaron, you’re an idiot,” she said.  
“I’ve been told that a lot lately, but I’m here to save you,” I said as I severed the zip ties holding one of her wrists to the arm of the chair she was sitting in.  
“Did it ever occur to you that you shouldn’t have done this?”  
“Of course it did, but you’re important.”  
“You’re so woefully stupid.”  
“I know, but at least we’re getting you out of here.”  
I grabbed her hand and helped her stand up, even though she didn’t need help. She had never once needed help from me, and I knew that. If I hadn’t showed up, she probably would have been out of there by the next morning, but I couldn’t resist trying to find her.  
“I had a plan,” she said, “I would have been fine.”  
I shrugged.  
“Well now you’re fine,” I said, and I didn’t know how wrong I was about to become.  
We slipped out of the boardroom, still clutching each other’s hand. I’d never mention it, but Immie’s hand was shaking. We slipped down hallway after hallway and stairwell after stairwell quietly, being lulled into a false sense of security. Then everything went wrong.  
Lots of people came from nowhere. I shoved Immie towards the stairwell (it was the last one before we were free, and if she’d run quickly enough she would have gotten out) because I knew what was happening. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not actually a complete idiot. The people were holding guns. I realized that I was shaking too.  
“Hello Jaron, I’m Kippenger, and you have made a bad choice by coming here,” said a tall man in the front of the group of people who had seemingly materialized from nothing.  
“Hi Kippenger, I don’t think I’ve made as bad a choice as you seem to think,” I said.  
I couldn’t see Immie. When I’d shoved her towards the stairwell I’d shoved her behind me, because that’s where the stairwell was. I was terrified to turn around just in case.  
“You’re wrong,” said Kippenger, “you’ve walked right into my trap. The trap may have been set for someone else, but you’re even better than he would have been.”  
Of course I had.  
“Well, what if you have actually walked into a trap of mine?” I said.  
Kippenger laughed, a noise that I would become incredibly familiar with over the next couple of weeks, but I didn’t know that yet. Kippenger kept laughing for a while. Then the sound of the sole of a shoe hitting the floor reached my ears, and I knew something terrible was happening.  
I whirled around. It was Immie’s shoe I’d heard. She was trying to run.  
I didn’t really hear the gunshot, but I saw it. I saw the bullet enter Immie’s shoulder. I barely heard the noise she made, my ears were ringing louder than anything else. I might have screamed, I have no idea. I watched as Immie’s body fell, and then my legs weren’t holding me up anymore.  
I regained consciousness in the boardroom where I had found Immie. (Immie who wasn’t alive anymore. Immie who I had gotten killed. Immie who would probably have been fine if it weren’t for me.) Or it might actually have been a different room, they all look the same to me. My leg hurt, and my head hurt, and I must have cried in my sleep. There was a security guard sitting in one of the sixteen chairs strewn about the room, and he looked like he hated me.  
I started crying again. The guard kicked my leg under the table.  
“Shut up,” he said.  
He’d somehow managed to kick the exact spot in my leg where it had been broken. I would have been surprised if I wasn’t busy trying not to scream.  
“Is your leg messed up or are you just a weakling?” Said the guard.  
I glared up at him through my tears. My whole body ached, and I was mourning. Immie was dead, and it was my fault.  
The guard left, and he turned off the light on his way out. It took a while for my eyes to start working in the dark, especially because tears and pain were distorting my vision. When my eyes became accustomed to the little red light coming from the smoke alarm on the ceiling I discovered that the only thing on the table in front of me was a large plastic pitcher of ice water. My ankles were tethered to the chair I was sitting in with zip ties, but my wrists were individually tied, so I could move a little.  
They left me alone for three days. I stopped crying after a few hours, and I resolved that I wouldn’t start again. I had time to mourn later, when the world was done ending. I refused to think about Immie. Instead, I thought about my stomach, and how much it hurt because I was starving. And then after a twelve or thirteen more hours the sharp pain inside me became a dull ache, and I lost my distraction. I played at planning myself an escape, but I didn’t really believe in any of them. I didn’t even really want to escape if it meant I lived and Immie didn’t.  
During those three days, I thought that being alone was the worst thing that was going to happen to me. Then those three days were over, and the real pain started.  
“Eat,” said Kippenger, handing me a cold can of soup.  
“No thanks,” I said.  
“You’re going to need some protein in you,” said Kippenger.  
“For what?” I scoffed.  
“Giving me information,” said Kippenger, his mouth twisting into a smile that made me want to throw up.  
I laughed.  
“Eat up,” said Kippenger.  
“I don’t feel like it,” I said, smiling up at Kippenger.  
I knew I must have looked a bit deranged, but I didn’t care. Immie was dead, so there was no reason for me to be alive.  
“Ok then, but you’ll be singing a different tune in a little while,” said Kippenger.  
So then he demanded inside information about my company, and I said no, and he wasn’t happy. So he hurt me for information, and I still didn’t give it to him because I was generally despondent. I didn’t care if he hurt me. I didn’t care about anything.  
This behavior was repeated for another three days, and my hunger got worse, and so did my resolve not to eat anything. Then Kippenger threatened to hurt some intern if I didn’t eat anything, so I ate. It felt amazing to eat. I’m not sure I realized quite how starving I was until I’d scarfed that can of soup. I felt almost human again.  
Feeling human was short lived however, because then Kippenger wanted inside information and I said no and he wasn’t happy. Kippenger laughed a lot, but he was never happy with whatever it is I was saying, or not saying. Then there were two more days of that.  
When Tobias showed up, I was convinced the world must be over. He was shocked that I was alive, and I was shocked that he was there. It was a lose lose situation.  
“I thought you were dead,” said Tobias.  
“I’d probably feel a lot better if I was,” I said.  
“What is wrong with you?” Said Tobias.  
“Lots and lots of things,” I said.  
So then they used him against me and I spouted a lot of lies in an attempt to keep him safe, and I stopped eating again. I’m going to gloss over the next week, because it was really just torture, and I don’t want to talk about it. Then Mott and Harlowe rescued us somehow. (Their plan was incredibly stupid and reckless, but at least it worked.) I passed out in Harlowe’s arms, very dramatically. I woke up in a parked car, huddled against Tobias’s side.  
“You’re freezing Jaron,” said Tobias.  
“Least I’m alive,” I said, “least we’re alive. Thank you. Thank you.”  
Then I started crying. Tobias wrapped his arm around me awkwardly and tried to say something comforting. It didn’t work out so great.  
“You’re welcome Jaron, we love you and we had to get you out of there,” said Harlowe.  
I just cried harder. In my defense I was sleep deprived, I hadn’t eaten in the last 24 hours, and I’d lost a lot of blood. Tobias continued trying to be comforting, Harlowe wouldn’t stop saying how he was so glad we were finally safe, which he thought would help but really didn’t, and I’m pretty sure Mott, who was driving (Technically, only in the driver’s seat since the car was parked), was crying too. It was a very emotional reunion.  
Then Tobias remembered that I was bleeding from a hole in my side and decided to announce it to everyone.  
“Jaron’s bleeding,” he said.  
“Shut up, Tobias,” I said, but I don’t think it was very intimidating because there were still tears streaming from my eyes.  
“We need to get you to a hospital,” said Mott.  
“No, no we don’t,” I said.  
“Not this again, Jaron you’re such an idiot,” said Tobias.  
“Yes this again,” I said, “Mott, go to the Pirates building.”  
“Not what again?” said Harlowe at the same moment.  
“No,” said Mott.  
“Yes,” I said.  
“No, Jaron I’m not letting you get yourself killed immediately after I save your life,” said Mott.  
“Not what again?” said Harlowe, as if he thought we hadn’t all heard him the first time.  
“He wants to ask for the Pirates’s help, since he’s technically their leader,” said Tobias.  
“Wait, you’re what?” said Harlowe.  
“Yeah, it’s a long story, Mott just drive please,” I said.  
“You never say please,” said Tobias.  
“Well I’m desperate, ok? I don’t want anyone else I love dying if I can prevent it, thanks,” I said.  
“Right,” said Tobias.  
“Can we go back to the fact that Jaron’s a gang leader?” Said Harlowe.  
“I can’t believe that no one told you that,” said Tobias.  
“I don’t think it really counts, since I haven’t actually been in contact with them in like three months,” I said.  
“We’re not going to the Pirates,” said Mott.  
“I think we are actually,” I said.  
“And why would you think that?” said Mott.  
“Because I own this car, and I know that this is our only hope. If you take me to the Pirates, I’ll let you take me to the hospital right after,” I said, even though it was a lie.  
So we went to the Pirates, it was an inconclusive mess, and then we left. In between showing up and leaving, a considerable amount of people voiced negative feelings towards me, no one seemed to care about my wellbeing or all the weird corporate espionage that was going on, and Erick was the only one who seemed to care about me at all. Also we ate a ton of their food.  
“Now are we going to the hospital?” Said Mott once we were back in the car.  
“Actually,” I said, and had no time to say any more because Mott and Tobias groaned.  
“I knew he was just bribing us to get his way. Jaron, you’re so very stupid,” said Tobias.  
“Can you guys shut up for one second and listen to my plan?” I said.  
“Must we?” Said Harlowe.  
“Actually, I need you to go back home and do some stuff for me,” I said.  
“This is ridiculous,” said Harlowe once I had told him what I needed him to do.  
“It may be, but whoever’s in charge of Avenia, Gelyn and Mendenwal is even more ridiculous, and they’re not going to stop until I’m dead,” I said.  
Harlowe shook his head at me and then got out of the car and hailed a taxi.  
“You’d better not die,” he said.  
“No one can kill me,” I said.  
“I could,” said Mott, “you’re lucky I don’t want to.”  
“Wow, thanks,” I said.  
“I thought you did want to kill him,” said Tobias. “You said you did when we were at the Pirates’.”  
“I was exasperated Tobias,” said Mott, “I’m not actually going to kill Jaron.”  
Harlowe was concerned.  
“Call me every three hours between seven A.M. and eleven P.M.,” said Harlowe, pointing at Tobias.  
Tobias nodded and gave Harlowe a thumbs up. We didn’t really have a way of knowing it at the time, but Tobias wouldn’t call him once.  
“Alright Jaron, what’s your stupid plan,” said Mott once Harlowe was gone.  
“Rinda’s missing right? So we have to find her,” I said.  
“You have a price on your head Jaron, we can’t afford to be playing detective,” said Mott.  
“We have to Mott, this is Rinda we’re talking about,” I said.  
Mott grumbled something under his breath.  
“Jaron,” said Tobias, but he didn’t say anything else, because he was furious.  
Then I got out of the car.  
“No!” Yelled Mott, but I had already slammed the car door.  
“Hey!” I said, waving down a dude who was crossing the street wearing an Avenia jacket.  
“What,” he said.  
“I know this is crazy, but I need you to do something for me,” I said, holding out a hundred that I’d slipped out of Harlowe’s wallet while he wasn’t looking (he could afford to lose a hundred, and I planned on paying him back).  
The guy grabbed the hundred.  
“What’s the thing you need me to do?” He said.  
“I need you to go to the Carthya building and give this,” I handed him a folded sticky note I had scribbled my message on and signed, “to a kid who looks really similar to me, answers to Roden.”  
The guy nodded at me, then unfolded the sticky note. He read it (surprisingly, since my handwriting is truly the worst I’ve ever seen due to years of being forced to use the wrong hand) and then looked up at me.  
“You’re that kid who owns Carthya, aren’t you? You must be crazy,” he said, “I want more money for getting this to where it’s supposed to go.”  
“I don’t have anymore,” I said, “ask for more when you get it to Roden, ok?”  
The guy shook his head and me, shoved my note into his pocket, and turned back in the direction of the Carthya building.  
“You’re crazy Joron,” said Tobias, who was standing behind me.  
“Crazy like a fox maybe,” I said.  
“If you needed to get a message to Roden why didn’t you send it with Harlowe, or just text him,” said Mott.  
“If I’d thought of this when Harlowe was still here, I might have,” I said.  
“What about texting, stupid?” Said Tobias.  
“We don’t have any phones to text with,” I said.  
“Yes we-” said Tobias, reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone, before realizing that it wasn’t there. “Jaron, what did you do?”  
Mott started digging in the glove compartment for his phone, but it was gone too. I smiled at them.  
“Jaron, what did you do?” Said Mott.  
“Crazy like a fox,” I said again.  
“Jaron, don’t make me hurt you,” said Mott.  
“That’s illegal,” said Tobias.  
“Is anything that’s happened recently legal, Tobias?” I said.  
“Well, no,” said Tobias.  
“What did you do Jaron,” said Mott, but his voice was more of a growl than usual.  
“Phones can be tracked,” I said, “I put them on the guy who’s giving the note to Roden.”  
“Did it ever occur to you that they may not have been being tracked, and that now we don’t have phones,” said Mott.  
“Why yes it did Mott,” I said, “you all think I’m so stupid, but I do think of obvious things like that.”  
Mott grumbled something.  
“So where are we going?” Said Tobias.  
“We’re going to one of the offices,” I said.  
“I thought we were looking for Amarinda,” said Tobias.  
“We are, we just have to go to the office first,” I said, then I climbed back into the car.  
I heard Tobias and Mott groan, and then Tobias climbed into the car next to me, and Mott slumped into the driver’s seat.  
“Which office?” Said Mott.  
“Marketing, the one that’s in the building we share with Avenia,” I said.  
I fell asleep on Tobias again on the way to the division of Carthya marketing that shared a building with part of the Avenia marketing team. I was rudely awakened by Tobias elbowing me in my busted ribs. I squeaked, and then I looked up. The building was on fire.  
“No,” I said.  
“Apparently,” said Tobias.  
“Well we’re still going inside,” I said.  
“The building’s on fire,” said Mott.  
“Only a little bit,” I said, sliding out of the car.  
Walking was hard, but I managed to make it into the building without completely collapsing. At first glance there was no one inside, and the place was trashed. My legs almost gave out on me, so Tobias grabbed my arm and held me up.  
“Calm down,” he said, “or you’re going to pass out again. We really need to get you to a hospital.”  
“Look,” I said, “there’s someone here.”  
There was a guy slouched on the floor under a desk.  
“What if he’s dead,” whispered Tobias.  
“He can’t be,” I said, and then crouched next to him.  
He made a noise.  
“He’s alive,” I said.  
“I can’t believe I’m alive,” said the guy on the floor.  
He was also wearing an Avenia jacket, and he looked like he’d been hit over the head with something heavy. I wasn’t going to leave him there to die or something.  
“You’re that kid, the one who owns Carthya,” he said.  
“Yeah, and you’re gonna be fine,” I said.  
“There’s a first aid kit in the kitchen,” said the guy.  
I tried to stand up too quickly and my balance left me. Tobias caught me so I didn’t fall, and gave me a look. I shook my head at him and stumbled towards the kitchen. I found the first aid kit, and then I found a shoe. A size 10 platform sneaker that I happened to know was owned by Rinda. I cursed, and then I ran back out into the foyer. My legs weren’t happy about that, but I didn’t seem to care.  
“You know where she is,” I said, waving the shoe in his face.  
“Who?” said the guy, even though the look in his eyes when he saw the shoe said something else.  
“Where is she,” I yelled.  
Tobias started trying to calm me down, and then he realized what I was holding. He breathed something that was probably a curse, but I couldn’t tell, and then he grabbed the first aid kit out of my other hand.  
“I don’t know,” said the guy.  
Tobias tried to fix the guy, while I demanded that he tell me where Rinda was. In the end, we got nothing out of him. We left him on a street corner because if we didn’t, the building was going to collapse on him, and went to find Rinda.  
We found the other shoe three blocks away. There were socked footprints leading down the street for half a mile. And then they disappeared next to an apartment building with a fire escape. I refused to leave the alley, so Mott went back for the car and parked it in the alley so that we could sleep there that night.  
So we curled up in the car and slept. It took me three hours to fall asleep. All I could think about was Immie. I was free, and she never would be. It wasn’t fair.  
I woke up when someone started banging on the passenger door of the car. I stared for a moment, because I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Rinda. It was Rinda.  
I dove forward, between the two front seats and unlocked the car door. I also kicked Tobias awake. Mott woke up when I elbowed him accidentally, while attempting to get the door open.  
“Did you three take sleeping pills or something?” Said Rinda once she was in the car.  
Tobias was hyperventilating, and made a high pitched noise.  
“I have exhaustion due to trauma,” I said.  
“Ok, great excuse,” said Rinda, but her voice was shaking.  
“Thank god you’re alive,” said Tobias.  
“I’m happy about it too,” said Rinda.  
Tobias started crying,  
“Can I hug you?” He said.  
Rinda crawled between the front seats and wrapped her arms around him.  
“I was so scared, when you weren’t anywhere that you were dead too,” she said.  
They held each other for a long moment, and then they finally let each other go. I guess that was the first time we really got to look at her, and she really got to look at us. She was filthy and barefoot, and her suit (midnight blue with pink, orange, and lime floral) was a mess. Her hair had fallen out of its bun, and her curls bounced wildly around her head. Her facial expression went through various levels of horrified as she took me and Tobias in. We must have looked as badly as we felt.  
“What happened to you?” She demanded. “Where’s Immie?”  
I bit my tongue.  
“She’s gone,” said Mott.  
“Gone?” said Rinda.  
“Gone, gone,” said Tobias.  
Then Rinda started crying. She wrapped her arms tightly around me, pressing her face into my shoulder and holding the back of my neck so that my face was pressed into her shoulder. And then I started to cry too. I hadn’t really mourned. I had sobbed in that dark boardroom, begging every higher power I could think of to let it not be true, but then I had made myself stop thinking about her. I’d shut that part of my brain down, and now I didn’t have to anymore.  
It was a long time before Rinda let me go again. After that, it was a long time before any of us spoke. Mott started driving at some point because we needed gas, but the next person to speak was Tobias.  
“Amy, I think we should tell him,” said Tobias.  
“I don’t know,” said Rinda.  
“What?” I said.  
“No,” said Rinda.  
“Rinda and I are kinda together,” said Tobias.  
“What made you think this was a good time?” said Rinda.  
“It’s not like we’re ever going to have a good time,” said Tobias.  
“Ok,” I said, “ok.”  
My brain was shutting down. Rinda used to be dating Darius. They’d been unofficially engaged since I was eight and they were ten. They were made for each other and they’d known it. And now my closest friend who wasn’t dead or not speaking to me was dating her. And it wasn’t like I’d expected Rinda to never date again, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen the way Tobias looked at her, that day had just been long and exhausting and Immie was dead and it was really hard for me to process even that I was hungry.  
“Ok,” I said again, “cool. Ok.”  
“Are you ok?” Said Rinda, “If it makes it any better, I didn’t think we should tell you yet.”  
“No, of course I’m ok. You both deserve to be happy. Love each other well ok, take care of each other,” I said.  
“You’re very calm,” said Mott.  
“Of course I am, Rinda’s like my sister and Tobias is like my brother, I want them to be happy. No one has done anything insane,” I said.  
Rinda wrapped her arms around me again.  
“Love you, kid,” she said.  
“I have done nothing earthshaking, and neither have you,” I said.  
“We’re going to a hotel,” said Mott.  
I checked the clock on the screen next to the steering wheel. It was three in the morning. It had been sixteen hours since Harlowe and Mott had broken us out. I wanted to sleep more.  
I woke up in a bed. It was early afternoon and light was streaming between the white curtains next to me. I was wrapped in sheets and an enormous cream comforter. I was warm and comfortable, swaddled in blankets and not in incredible pain for the first time in weeks.  
“Good morning sleeping beauty,” said Rinda.  
“It’s not morning anymore I think,” I said, eyeing the clock on my bedside table.  
I wondered absently why I had been put into the bed and not one of the others. I wasn’t used to sleeping in a bed. I’d just been kidnapped for a while and slept on the floor, and before that I’d slept on the couch a lot.  
“Why am I in a bed?” I asked.  
“Because you’re injured spectacularly and this is the least we can do to keep you comfortable,” said Tobias.  
“But you were also kidnapped, and Rinda had to escape people trying to kill her,” I said, sitting up.  
“And neither of them are grievously injured,” said Mott.  
“I’m not grievously injured either,” I said, sliding out of the bed and to my feet.  
“Try again,” said Rinda as my legs gave out on me.  
“Well I should be fine by now,” I said, dragging myself back onto the bed.  
“The next day?” Said Tobias.  
“The fact that you’re only human must be so offensive to you,” said Rinda.  
I stuck my tongue out at her.  
“Wow, mature,” said Tobias.  
“Do people really say that? I don’t think that people really say that,” I said.  
“I just did,” said Tobias.  
“Wow, did you?” I said.  
“We’re going to the hospital now,” said Mott.  
“How about we don’t?” I said.  
“Jaron, I think I have been remarkably calm about all of this, but you are seriously hurt, and Imogen is dead. The police should be informed, and you should be seen to by a medical professional,” said Mott.  
I swallowed hard.  
But I didn’t have time to think, because suddenly someone was banging on the door. Mott checked the peephole, and then motioned for us to hide. I shoved Tobias and Rinda towards the closet. I, it seemed, could not walk without help, so I slid off the bed and sat on the floor. I couldn’t be seen from the front door, I was sure of that, so I just sat there on the floor and tried to breathe quietly, which was a problem.  
I heard the door open, and then some shuffling.  
“Where’s the kid?” asked a remarkably unattractive voice.  
“Not here,” said Mott.  
“Our friend told us he was,” said the voice.  
So they were more Avenia guys. Great.  
I clawed my way to my feet and sat on the bed because my legs really didn’t want to hold me up.  
“Well, your friend’s an idiot,” I said.  
We got rid of them, but not before Mott threatened them with bodily harm if they didn’t give us information. The information was basically that Avenia and their allies were going to literally attack the Carthya building. I don't know what crazy person decided on that, but apparently it was happening. This meant that we had a lot of warning people to do.  
I decided that my legs were going to hold me up whether they liked it or not, and I told Rinda and Tobias to go hide. They tried to argue with me, but I told them to go find themselves a hotel they could lay low in until all of this was over. I had to practically shove them out the door, but they left eventually.  
And Mott and I had to go to the Carthya building and warn people.  
When we got to the Carthya building, there were literally people fighting in the hallways and offices of the ground floor. I told you this story was insane.  
Basically, the next 48 hours were even wilder, and involved setting a lot of stuff on fire. I am proud to relate that I blocked out most of it. I almost immediately found Roden and he called me a series of colorful names. Oh, and then I got myself and Fink kidnapped for the cause! That’s all I remember of that 48 hours though. Don’t worry, it gets better!  
Then I got us out by jumping off a building with a rope tied around my waist so that we wouldn’t become pancakes on concrete, which may have been equally painful for me, because my ribs were still busted. So then we almost died, because since breaking my leg, I hadn’t been practicing my climbing-apartment-building skills.  
Then there was so much more mess. My therapist says that it’s really good that I blocked it out, because she’s talked to Mott about it, and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was ugly.  
Here, though, are facts, until we get back to a part I actually remember: Mott got hurt and we sent him to the hospital with a half-baked explanation. Roden got kidnapped by Avenia. Then, evidently I did something stupid, cause I got kidnapped again. Then I was informed of a plan to kill me that I had helped execute, and that was going forward as planned, so I was dragged to Conner's estate. No joke.  
The next thing I remember is pain, because I was being forced to walk down the stairs to the basement where they were going to keep me until such a time as they saw fit to murder me. And then I looked up, and there was Roden, still alive and looking furious, sitting on the floor in the corner of the basement room I remembered so well. And then my eyes scanned the rest of the room and found something else entirely. You’ll never guess.  
Immie was sitting in the corner, in a pair of joggers and a tank top. There were some badly bound bandages wrapped around the shoulder where she was shot. And she wasn’t dead. The dudes who had dragged me downstairs dropped me and left, locking the basement door behind them. I was not good at standing up, but I managed to not entirely collapse at that moment.  
“Immie?” I choked, because I couldn’t believe it and it made me both intensely happy and increasingly terrified, and I was already crying, “Are you real?”  
I think that Roden laughed then, but I have no idea if he really did.  
Immie stood up and that was all it took to be standing next to me, because the room was tiny. She nodded at me and my vision completely blurred because my tears were uncontrollable. She wrapped her arms around me, holding me up, stronger than me, just as she always was.  
Then she kissed me. She kissed the top of my head, and then my forehead, and then my cheek, and then my mouth. She held me so close until I pulled away from her and stared up into her eyes.  
“Do you love me?” I asked.  
“I can’t,” she started, and choked a little bit, so I guess she was crying too, “I can’t- I can’t say that there was ever a time since we met that I didn’t love you.”  
“That’s kinda stupid of you,” said Roden.  
Immie laughed through her tears, and put me on the ground. I’m sure she was tired from being the only thing holding me up. I’d also given her the key to the door, because I’d stolen the spare at some point. Then we bided our time by talking, and Immie told me about how she’d managed not to die, and I started crying again.  
Then there was more stuff that I’d blocked out, and we escaped, Conner died, and Immie, Roden and I almost did.  
We were all stuck in a hospital for days, and the only things on the tvs in our rooms were news footage of the fall of about a bajillion corrupt businessmen, all of whom had done their very best to get me killed, and also footage of us being saved. They played this one clip of me, holding on to Roden as though my life depended on it, throwing up into a bush in front of a burning building, about a thousand times a day, and I was sick of it. I had no memory of it happening, but Roden assured me that it had, and that I owed him a new pair of shoes.  
And now it’s been two years since all of that happened. Immie, Roden, and I are 16 now. Tobias is 17, but close enough to 18 that he tells everyone he’s an adult. Rinda’s 18, and enjoying being an adult.  
We’ve all started therapy, which is how I know that recovery is hard, and that it hurts, and we’re all doing better. We have put our past behind us, although the same cannot be said for the press, which likes to periodically remind everyone of the absolute crap we have been through. We’re happy now.


End file.
